There has always been a lot of talk in poker surrounding the debate between ‘math players’ and ‘feel players’ – between those who ground their decision-making processes in complex mathematical calculations which represent their interpretations of the different factors involved in making a poker decision, and those who prefer to ‘trust their gut’, or play according to an instinct, a feeling, or a specific piece of information that can’t be defined mathematically. If you’re a newcomer to poker, you’ve probably heard such terminology and wondered, “well, which is better? How should I make my decisions?”
The answer is pretty obvious at this point – poker has become a complex enough game that it’s not enough to simply be one kind of player or the other. You have to have the ability to use both of those contrasting skill sets when appropriate – to make sound theoretical plays and then be able to support the occasional deviation from theory with experience and good instincts, in spots where the situation may be either too unique or too complex to be defined mathematically.
So, ultimately, what’s the difference? Do these two types of players even exist any more? Well, yes and no. There are still plenty of recreational players who – extremely foolishly – refuse to believe in the math, and base their decisions on a feeling about what cards are going to come; also in the sense that there are many advanced players who have an extremely solid mathematical understanding of the game, but are over-reliant on math to the point that they often fail to develop the instincts and creativity necessary to truly maximise your edge in any given game. They miss out on a lot of the complex psychological cues offered up by weaker players, in both live and online poker, and as such they miss potential spots to increase their EV.
What I would propose, however, with regard to today’s highly-skilled poker players who blend mathematics and psychology in a way that makes them very dangerous at the table, is that it’s simply a matter of communication. In fact, it always has been – there was never really any such thing as a ‘math player’ or a ‘feel player’, merely a difference in the way each individual expresses their understanding of the nuances of the game, both internally and when communicating with others.
Mathematicians often talk about how mathematics are a language unto themselves. They suggest that a great mathematician – or even merely a good one – can see an equation written down and immediately understand an idea in a way that is impossible to communicate in any other way. Indeed, many often claim that a simple equation can be as beautiful as a work of art to someone who understands it in the right way.
The rest of us, however, don’t necessarily have the skills to communicate complex ideas in mathematical form – concepts of design, or engineering, or chemistry, or physics, or biology, are conveyed in ‘layman’s terms’ using English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, or any of the other myriad of linguistic forms that humanity has developed over the course of its evolution, to help us communicate with one another and explore our understanding of certain concepts.
In essence, the imprecise and changeable tool of language is in many instances merely a substitute for the ability to communicate with absolute clarity the scientific reality of a situation (NB: I’m not an expert, but I did study languages and linguistics in college, so I am familiar with the subject on an academic level)..
Poker is no different. In retrospectively analysing a poker hand, we do one of two things – we either judge it according to a complex set of calculations that represent the perceived profitability of the decisions in question, or we skip the math and talk it through. We say to ourselves, “well, it was probably a bad spot to 3bet light here because I don’t think he folds very often”.
The same concept can be expressed in an almost entirely mathematical way, which would lead to a more precise judgment of profitability, but there’s a problem with this – human beings can’t actually verbally communicate with one another purely in math! These analyses, therefore, make it very difficult for a student to learn from a coach, or even for a player to learn from his own mistakes, because our brains are wired to think in terms of language.
What this means is that when we analyse that same generic decision above, we might say “well, I think he opens about 40% of hands here and folds all but the top 10%, so he folds to our 3bet 75% of the time”. We could express this in a purely mathematical way if we had all the variables and bet sizings in the hand, and indeed there are plenty of EV calculator programs out there which would do just that for us.
But the problem is, it’s incredibly hard to do all of that in real-time, with our inner monologue and our emotions fighting for control. It takes long periods of conditioning for our brains to be able to work through all that math in such a short space of time, which is why the only ones who can do it really precisely are the ones who’ve played millions of hands of online poker in their careers.
In real-time, therefore, we tend to use math where we can – simple pot odds calculations, estimations of our equity in a hand – and then we simply ‘fill in the gaps’ with language. We fill it in with imprecise approximations of our views on the hand, such as “he probably folds a lot here”, or “this looks really strong”.
It might seem like I’m saying this is a bad thing, and coming down on the side of math, but in actual fact, here’s the reason why both methods are necessary – there are factors that can’t be expressed mathematically. We can’t necessarily assign a mathematical value to the importance of a player snap-shoving, or a live tell, or a player’s SharkScope graph, but we can certainly make decisions based on those factors in some instances.
What this tells us, therefore, is that while it’s obvious that in today’s game, you have to be both a math player and a feel player, what each playing style is really about is not necessarily the actual methodologies a player uses to make his or her decisions, but rather the way in which those methodologies are expressed, outwardly or inwardly. As a result, it seems to me that poker is fast becoming a language unto itself.
Think about it – have you ever had an in-depth conversation about a poker hand with someone, and had a non-poker player overhear you? Chances are, their response was something like “I have no idea what you just said”. I mean, a phrase like “I decided to min-3bet my bluff range here because this nitty reg is probably raise-folding 80% of his opening range on the FT bubble because of ICM” makes absolutely zero sense to a non-poker player, but it (I hope) makes perfect sense to you.
You, or I, or any other poker player, can look at a hand of poker being played out and have a pretty good idea of what’s going on in each player’s head, compared to a non-poker player. We can analyse a hand history and usually say within 5 seconds if the hand looks ‘standard’ to us. We talk about how our bluffs or value bets need to ‘tell a story’. With everything we do in poker, we’re communicating information about our hand, and there’s a whole system of thought and logic that can be read between the lines. Language is simply the externalisation of thought processes, and so is making a bet at the poker table.
What does that mean, therefore, for our thought processes? How should we use this concept of poker as a language to become better poker players? Well, I would suggest that it’s a matter of integrating both aspects of poker logic into our learning. Obviously whenever we talk over a hand with a coach, we have to use language to do that – whenever we analyse a hand on a forum, we have to use language to do that as well.
This gives us the platform to talk about our opinions, our instincts, what we felt in the moment (“this was a horrible spot”, etc), but it also often encourages us to take shortcuts in how we analyse hands. It’s harder to communicate the math of a situation because it’s based on our assumptions about behaviours, so it takes a long time to do it right in some instances, and even when it’s precise, it can still be imprecise if our assumptions are wrong – but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the effort.
I, we, you, everyone who wants to get better at poker, needs to embrace the idea of an integrated ‘language of poker’ that embraces both math and psychology. It’s not acceptable to try to analyse a hand in-depth without using math, because that’s the equivalent of trying to Jedi mind trick yourself into believing you made the right play. It’s also not acceptable to assign arbitrary mathematical values to things that can’t be quantified effectively, such as a player’s emotional state, past history, specific reads, live tells, game flow, or future tournament equity.
Doing either of these isn’t going to help your game – if poker is a language, math is the grammar and feel is the vocabulary. Your feelings about a hand don’t mean anything if they’re not supported by some kind of evidence, and if you can’t explain how you found your evidence, your feelings won’t hold much weight.
Next time you’re talking about poker with someone, make sure you’re doing it right. Do you speak poker?